A typical terminal for receiving digital signals representative of data information and for displaying this information visually, includes, among other things, a character generator for converting the data into a form which can be applied to a display device which then displays a character represented by the signals.
A manufacturer of terminals of this type normally manufactures a system which includes a single character generator for all terminals to be used in the United States. Up to now, for systems to be used in foreign countries, the manufacturer has provided a separate unique character generator for each country even though many countries have, in their machine language, many characters in common with the United States. This represents an undesirable expense and inventory problem where a relatively large number of countries is involved.